The price of boldness is steep for me, an introvert. But years later that same price can alchemize into its own reward, and the memory of a glad-hearted, clear-eyed transgression can prick beguilingly at the complacency of a settled and latent life. Maybe you know this already, or learned it years ago.
This was a summery Saturday, in college, when you loomed large and I tiptoed around your friends until I could escape with you on your motorcycle to the river's edge. What I remember is a clearing in a roadside bamboo grove, with your motorcycle parked on the asphalt not far away. You gave me no details as we dismounted the bike, and I had learned not to try pressing them from you. Perhaps you glimpsed the bamboo grove on a casual walk at the outskirts of the campus, and it stuck in your memory.
We stepped together into this space someone had hacked at to create, for some unknown purpose. It was a relief from the sun and smelled like cool earth. You had led me here with our hands close together, but not touching, and studied my reaction. Bars of sunlight filtered in, as though through open blinds. Dust motes floated in those shafts of light and a weird sense of magic, of escape, and even a tinge of trespass prevailed.
I looked around, vaguely pleased. The light striped your body, but the sun was low, and your face was in green shadows. Part of me waited for your touch, feeling frustration curl up the edges of a desire you knew how to stoke.
You surveyed the place yourself, made some observations, and folded your much-worn jacket over your arm. Once you had bragged about discreetly swiping that jacket from your part-time job at the steakhouse, unclaimed as it was for a week in the lost-and-found bin. A perfect-fitting leather jacket with a bonus backstory.
I can sense your pause, and half turn around, hoping your eyes are on me. They are, and you approach me from behind, reaching for my shoulders. I turn and smile, looking up expectantly. You dip your head, but my lips are too far down. So you spin me back around, pinned against the towering, rustling stalks of bamboo which I try, inadequately, to grip. You press up against me, smelling my hair, skimming the edges of my hips with your fingers and then pressing your hands over mine on the bamboo.
A few petals of that desire open up again.
I tilt up my ass almost unconsciously, feeling it nestle there against the bulge in your jeans — the same bulge that I've pinned so much of my pride to, that always triggers a chain reaction of longing, destined to burn out in frenzy. You grunt approval, with half a laugh to mock me for my need, knowing the prudish veneer that preceded it.
Does shame give a keening edge to this kind of pleasure?
Your firm fingers wander down my chest and start kneading a breast. My head tips back against you, and my sense of balance starts to fail me. So swift, too easy, too late. Damn.
It isn't fair, and I part my lips and flash you a look of righteous outrage. Outrage that you could go on smirking, lining your pride with the helplessness of my desire, drawing out exquisite proofs of it excessively, greedily. Something shifts in the sun: the femme intrepide emerges from her crouch within me.
I reach back to pull your shoulder toward me. You lean over into earshot and I say softly, when your chin nears my cheek:
"Sit down. I want to straddle you."
You stiffen and walk away to find a flat space in the clearing to lay down your jacket, a brief uncertainty in your expression vindicating me.
